European Trip: Inside Van Cleef & Arpels’ Le Grand Tour

A spotlight of Haute Couture Week, which happened earlier this month in Paris, was Van Cleef & Arpels‘ unveiling of its newest excessive jewellery assortment. Titled Le Grand Tour, it encompasses 70 items, all impressed by a convention in Seventeenth- to Nineteenth-century Western tradition that noticed younger aristocrats taking lavish journeys by means of Europe to expertise its cultural wonders.

“The gathering celebrates a convention that has at all times fascinated us,” VCA president and CEO Nicolas Bos commented in notes on Le Grand Tour. “The gathering blends the traditions of jewellery and ornamental arts—such objects had been introduced again as souvenirs from the grand tour—with the thought of as soon as once more discovering and mixing intervals and cultures. For that, we adopted the path of our predecessors and selected cities that had been famend stops traditionally. We took inspiration from vintage jewellery, marrying it with our personal heritage, model, and craftsmanship. The end result is sort of a colourful sketchbook that invitations to dive into locations and gems.”

Stops on this glittering journey embrace London, Paris, the Swiss Alps, and Baden Baden (within the coronary heart of southwestern Germany), however essentially the most action-packed chapter unfolds in Italy. Learn on for a “travelogue” of the treasures positioned therein.

A quartet of versatile bandeaux bracelets typical of Van Cleef & Arpels’ work within the Nineteen Twenties gives a sort of amuse-bouche to the multicourse Italian feast to return: There may be one bracelet every for Venice, Florence, Rome, and Naples, the locations highlighted on this portion of Le Grand Tour.

Sculpted gold motifs depicting well-known Italian landmarks glint from gem-set backgrounds that evoke a bejeweled panorama of colourful micromosaic tesserae. You may make out the architectural options of the Colosseum within the instance proven under.

VENICE

The town’s wonderful canals and picturesque gondolas are expressed within the magnificent necklace under (simply in case you wanted additional proof that turquoise could be unbelievably luxe). This choker model is fringed with 16 articulated turquoise pendants topped by pavé diamond arches, a nod to Venice’s bridges. Deep blue sapphires add distinction, and the again of the necklace is completed with essentially the most decadent shock: neat rows of gradated blue sapphires.

Past the Venetian panorama’s distinctive options, different inspirations inform this group. For instance, the Carriera earrings are an homage to the Venetian painter Rosalba Carriera (1675—1757), a member of the Rococo motion, whose work, in keeping with the gathering notes, is claimed to have influenced a penchant for pastels among the many courtiers of 18th-century France. Therefore the earring’s varied shades of pink; the inclusion of pearls alludes to the jewellery kinds that had been in vogue in the course of the Rococo period in France and in Italy.

FLORENCE

Magical Firenze, without end steeped in Previous World appeal and romance and Renaissance historical past… The jewels from this cease on the tour lean closely on stones in painterly colours that additionally evoke ardour and want, taking a cue from town’s magnificent artisan traditions. Van Cleef & Arpels fittingly provides an homage to the Florentine painter Sandro Botticelli and his well-known 1485 masterpiece The Beginning of Venus with a hoop that facilities an oval-cut pink sapphire within the hole of a rose gold shell. The spiraling gems and metalwork of the Ode à l’Amour ring seize the essence of the portray’s iconic sea-themed particulars and the tendrils of Venus’ water-swept hair.

An authentic tackle Florentine aesthetics: the Villanova necklace, impressed by Etruscan-style jewellery, with its beneficiant ensemble of rubellites and diamonds descending from a rose gold choker woven in a chevron sample. Every rubellite factor is removable in case the second calls merely for the richness of gold and diamonds. And that clasp!

ROME

Van Cleef & Arpels artisans had been endlessly impressed by the Everlasting Metropolis’s architectural and historic marvels, from St. Peter’s Sq. to Villa Borghese. The Piazza Divina necklace borrows the previous’s geometric format, first designed by Bernini within the Seventeenth century, with its elliptical motifs—together with the 13.08 ct. oval-cut emerald that’s the centerpiece of the removable medallion.

A celebration of Roman antiquity, the Anfora clip reveals a pink jasper intaglio relationship to the 2nd century A.D. It sits on the coronary heart of a composition impressed by the traditional artwork of goldsmithing and punctuated with a lapis lazuli cabochon, a splash of diamonds, and an oval spessartite garnet that bathes the jewel with a heat, sun-like glow.

Lastly, the Diana transformable necklace is a reference to the temple of Diana within the gardens of Villa Borghese. Its distinctive columns and cupola floor on the base of the necklace’s ornate central medallion, enclosing a sapphire, and crowning a tassel of pearls and emerald beads. The tassel is removable so the necklace could be worn quite a few methods; the jewel additionally breaks all the way down to type two matching bracelets, and the sapphire medallion doubles as a brooch.

NAPLES

Van Cleef & Arpels’ final cease in Italy features a necklace impressed by town’s famed Church of Gesù Nuovo; the opposite items on this group are rooted in locales which might be typically included as “day journeys” on itineraries overlaying Napoli and its environs.

The Ninfe necklace summons the mosaics of the ruined Nymphaeum, a monument that was constructed within the historical enclave of Herculaneum on the Bay of Naples (like Pompeii, Herculaneum was decimated by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 70 A.D.). The necklace takes its type from a lavish floral crown worn by one of many nymphs within the mosaics.

Floral and foliate motifs—a Van Cleef & Arpels signature since its inception—additionally present up in three brooches within the Naples group, together with the Symphonie Végéstory. They’re impressed by terraces and gardens discovered within the villas of Ravello on the Amalfi coast.

Who wouldn’t need to linger in these blooming paradises, actual or bejeweled?

Prime: Postcard from “Naples” through Van Cleef & Arpels: Symphonie de l’eau clip in white gold and rose gold with black opal cabochon, sapphires, tsavorite garnets, inexperienced tourmalines, and diamonds.  

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